


notches

by Crydamoure



Category: Doom Patrol (TV)
Genre: M/M, i cant call this a slow burn bc they dont even Know, takes place in that strange limbo after cliff's accident but before the actual events of the show, turns out larry and cliff could rly use each others help but they dont even know it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-05-31 12:55:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19426429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crydamoure/pseuds/Crydamoure
Summary: The year was 2000 and Cliff Steele was still a brain, floating in nutrient-rich liquid. And it wasn’t the manor’s fault. Technically it was Chief’s fault. Technically it was his fault.





	notches

**Author's Note:**

> hello, i started writing this around episode 2... then just forgot about this until today, busted it out and decided to finish it. i am literally obsessed with the fact that it was larry who gave cliff the toy car set and wanted to do a little bit of.... Explorashun.... hope you like useless dialouge btwn 2 characters !!! enjoy !!!!

Sometimes Cliff wished for a metaphorical prison cell wall. Just a piece of cement in which he could carve notches, one for each day he has spent in the Chief’s manor. It’s not that he was a prisoner, but there was something about the time passage in this particular building that felt like Cliff was counting days to freedom. 

What freedom though? 

The year was 2000 and Cliff Steele was still a brain, floating in nutrient-rich liquid. And it wasn’t the building’s fault. Technically it was Chief’s fault. Technically it was his fault.

Chief was currently checking the exposed wiring in a leg belonging to the glorified, mechanized body-case that Cliff was inhabiting. The man was even humming to himself as he continued the scheduled check-up in the damp basement. Cliff just submitted to the experience. Mostly because he had nothing else to do in his life.

Chief’s fault. Yeah, right. As if Chief put him in that car in the middle of the night. 

“Everything seems to be in order.” Chief’s voice summoned his attention back to the present. “Perhaps I could teach you to perform some of these maintenance tasks yourself?” 

Cliff willed the bronze head to raise from the check-up slab. The warmth in Chief’s voice sounded genuine. 

“Yeah. Maybe.” Cliff replied, voice blank as his mechanical stare. 

Chief smiled sadly. Cliff really hated that smile because it signaled that help was on its way. Every time Chief smiled like that, eyes soft but the wrinkles around his mouth deep and sharp, it meant that some attempt to distract Cliff from the reality of his situation was about to commence. The man lives surrounded by sad circus freaks, Cliff rationalized it to himself sometimes, of course he can sense when to intervene. But Cliff hated pity so he had to hate Chief’s sad smiles as well.

And at the same time, he awaited those smiles with a breath he could no longer bate.

“I believe we are done here-- ah, Cliff." Chief's voice seemed so natural and any fake-sounding spontaneity was obscured by the whirl of his wheelchair as he turned around. Cliff could have sworn this was absolutely not planned at all, but he knew better at this point. "Before you go." 

Cliff watched the older man turn around and grab an unmarked cardboard box. It must have been light, given how Chief transferred it from the nearest desk to his lap without any effort at all. Cliff stared at the unassuming white cardboard. The box looked like it should be storing a birthday cake inside, but something was telling him that its contents were less cheerful.

"What's that?" Cliff asked, willing his mechanical body to sit upright on the checkup slab. 

"If you could deliver these to Larry's room..." Chief slowly lifted up the paper lid, revealing layers of bandage rolls tucked neatly inside. 

Ah. So that is what the Chief chose for today - an attempt to get him to talk to the rest of freaks in the manor disguised as an innocent errand. Chief did that from time to time, told him to get something to Rita's room or find Larry somewhere in the huge mansion. Anything to get him to interact with the rest. Not that Cliff was truly, actually against that. He was in a peculiar situation. Dying to talk but denying himself the right to interact first. Maybe Chief could see that and that's why he kept pushing all of his patients into each other's arms. At least he had the decency to pretend it was nothing more but an innocent request in order to save Cliff’s battered, welded-over pride.

He stared at the bandages blankly. Something whirred as his robotic eyes blinked. "Sure."

"Thank you." Chief closed the box, patiently waiting for Cliff to move his lumbering body to a standing position and then slowly walk up. "Larry should be in his room-- ah, just one thing. Check the controls before entering. If the red light is on, leave the bandages outside, please. Do not enter Larry’s room. Your body can withstand a lot of damage but we haven't tested it fully yet..."

"What are you talking about?" Cliff wished he could just shake his head at Chief and make it look natural as opposed to the demented rattling he was performing now. 

The obvious set up for further questions was incredibly annoying-- if Chief wanted to tell him something, maybe he should have just spat it out instead of hoping that Cliff would ask additional questions.

"Well, perhaps I shouldn't tell you without Larry's permi--"

"Oh for fuck's sake, man." Cliff just grabbed the box from Chief's lap. Stay mysterious if you think it makes you look smarter, he wanted to say. He didn't. He should have. 

Cliff didn't want to believe that people are inherently bad. But they are capable of shit things, he himself has done quite a lot of them when he still had a body. It was inside him, it could be inside Chief too. And provoking someone who could turn off his brain with just a switch… it did not seem like a smart idea. 

Maybe I am a prisoner of more than just this metal husk, Cliff thought as he got into the elevator. Maybe this is all just one big power play. 

He wished he could escape that mental track. His thoughts in general. His guilt, his numbness. But this new body was tragically resistant to all distractions he could think of-- no eating, no drinking, no smoking, no getting high, no fucking. Nothing physical to pull him away from the scrapdome which trapped his brain with all of its thoughts inside. He half-groaned, half-sighed as he got out of the lift and started scaling the steps to get to the last floor of the manor.

Maybe a conversation will be enough. Enough to stop making him think.

Cliff briefly imagined rows of notches covering the inner walls of his metal body, hidden between wires and whatever the fuck was whirring and ticking inside him. He did not know, he did not want to know. He did not know what his insides looked like because they no longer felt like his. They did not feel at all, in fact. 

The distraction could not come soon enough. His steps boomed in the hallway on the last floor. As he fixed his grip on the box with bandages, he realized that he has never been inside Larry’s room yet. He knew which one it was though. The big metal doors across Rita’s, he’s watched Larry retreat inside after one of the many Rita-themed movie nights they had to endure.

Cliff paused in front of the heavy steel door. And then he knocked. Well, clanged.

A muffled “It’s safe!” answered the knock. Cliff spared a second to wonder about the word choice and then pressed the silver handle, stepping inside. The control light blinked at him in an inviting, green way as he stepped through a tiny hallway. His room didn’t have that. His room just had four walls. 

Larry’s room was different. It had heavy, black panels lining the floor, ceiling and walls. There was a mirror, some metal furniture, a bed. Another door on the right, and a chair. Some photos which Cliff politely avoided with his gaze. A desk. And, of course, plants. Plants hugging the tiny windows, plants hanging from a dresser, plants preening on the many shelves. Larry was sitting on the floor, his legs crossed over the spread newspapers. He wasn’t wearing his usual pretentious pilot cloak, but a buttoned up shirt. The reason for that was easy to guess - Larry was holding an unpotted plant in his stretched out arms, a green leafy monstrosity dripping wet clumps of soil everywhere.

“Cliff.” Larry greeted him in his usual soft-spoken tone, but Cliff could sense a muffled hint of surprise that suggested that he didn’t expect to see his lumbering frame step through the metal doorway. If Cliff had to guess, he was probably expecting to see Rita tiptoe inside and propose some cocktail party or whatever.

“I got you something from the Chief.” Cliff explained straight away. There was a purpose behind his visit, a practical one-- see? He placed the box on the stand near the strange circular mirror, avoiding any movement that would place him within its range of reflection. 

Larry let out a small, muffled hum. He neatly tucked the plant in the pot it was just freed from and stood up, dusting off his bandaged hands. Larry carefully lifted the lid to peek inside the box. 

“Ah. Nice.” His tone was forced. “I was beginning to run out of these.” Larry turned his head to shelves overflowing with bandages rolls. He closed the lid and turned the gaze of black goggles to Cliff. 

Sensing an awkward moment of silence about to come, Cliff asked the first question that popped into his head. 

“What’s with the security measures?” He pointed at the heavy doors he just emerged from.

“That? Well.” Larry picked up the box and stared at Cliff, doing some sort of mental estimation. Cliff waited, expressionless as always. Finally, Larry arrived at some sort of conclusion about him and replied: “I’m radioactive.”

Cliff blinked. Larry tucked the box neatly on the shelf next to other bandage rolls.

“What.”

Larry shrugged with his now free arms. 

“The crash I told you about-- for whatever reason, my body just emits radiation. A lot of it, actually.”

Cliff stared at Larry’s unassuming frame. The surprises and weird shit never stop coming in this house, he thought. Cliff was no scientist, but he had some memory of Cold War scares fed to him when he was a kid. Nuclear bombs and radiation were bad, of that much he was certain. And right now he was supposedly talking to a man emitting invisible waves that gave people cancer or whatever? Though, perhaps he shouldn’t care. It’s not like he still had skin that could get burned or cells that could get lumped together in a deadly mess.

“So… Chief and Rita…”

“The bandages stop it.” Larry interrupted him, his voice raising an octave up for the first time since Cliff has met him. “Chief’s invention. They’re soaked in some chemicals that keep the radiation in so that,” A pause. “I’m safe to be around.”

“That’s… incredible.” Cliff found himself saying against his better wishes. Not only did Chief figure out a way to transfer a reluctant brain into a robot body but apparently he also created a textile-based means of stopping radiation? “I mean, the bandages thing. The radiation is fucked up.”

Larry snorted softly through his nose and for some reason, Cliff felt like he just won something.

“Yes, it is.” Larry’s attention returned to the plant on the floor. Cliff watched him kneel down, lift it up by the meaty stem and pluck it out of the old pot. He never assumed that Larry had to live with more than assumed crash-burns and whatever he meant by “unwanted stowaway” inside his body. 

“So… can you even take these off? How do you shower man?” 

Larry looked up at him from the floor, the way his head moved was a little bit too fast, a little too sharp to be a casual, natural movement. And again, Cliff felt like Larry was calculating something in that wrapped up head of his. He could see the reflection of his red, mechanical eyes in the polished black of Larry’s goggles. Two red dots in the void. A second passed and air around them suddenly softened as Larry looked back at his plant. 

What did he see when he looked at me just now, Cliff wondered.

“I can.” Larry replied, as casual as if Cliff just asked him about something mundane like breakfast habits.

“Oh.”

“But then I have to lock myself up in a lead-lined room.”

Something jumped inside him but he didn’t know what as he no longer had muscles that could spasm.

I’m locked up in a bronze-lined room myself, thought Cliff. 

“Huh. Sucks.” He said instead.

Larry mhm’d at him after a pause. Cliff watched him go through the tangled roots of the plant he was holding. The wrapped fingers meticulously tugged at some parts, shook off the old dirt, straightened out curled vines. Cliff wondered if Larry knew what was happening right now-- that Cliff was asking all these questions because he was starved for words offered by others, starved for a distraction from his own pain through the damage of others.

“You’re not the only unlucky guy in here.” Larry said suddenly, proving that yes, he did know what was happening here. 

“Hey, I know that.” Cliff replied a little too fast, a little too defensive. 

He never tried to make himself a center of pity-attention, in fact, he did the exact opposite by staying in his room for entire days. If he doesn’t ask for help, it means he doesn’t need it. Or deserve it. 

“But, between the two of us, I’m at least a little easier to look at.” Larry continued, proving that even though he knew what was happening here, he didn’t mind it.

“Oh ha-ha.” Cliff snapped back with a dry, sarcastic laugh. “Are you smiling underneath all that gauze, Imhotep?”

“Maybe.” Larry replied in a tone that suggested that yes, he was indeed smiling.

And Cliff took that invitation and ran with it. As long as they are talking, they are not thinking about their shitty situations. He crouched down to watch Larry’s hands transfer the plant to a new pot and blanket its roots with layers of fresh soil. 

“We should get into professional poker, you and I. We’d kill it with our poker faces.” 

Larry snorted, almost cautiously. Like this wasn’t something to laugh about and yet he couldn’t help it. His bandaged palms patted down the dirt with a soft, pleasant sound. Cliff assumed the operation was a success. 

“I’m a Blackjack guy myself.” Larry made no attempts to get up from the floor, in fact, he made himself more comfortable by placing his stretched out arms behind his back for support. 

“Ah, so you’re saying you can count to twenty-one? I’m jealous.” 

When Cliff felt the ball rolling, he would not dare to stop it. Larry stared at him and Cliff wished he could see his expression, not just his own robotic reflection in the black goggles. 

“Anyone ever tell you you’re a funny guy?” Larry tilted his head back a little, his chin was pointed at Cliff with a certain playful sharpness. 

Before Cliff could shoot back with another comment, Larry continued: “You should leave that room more often.”

The ball skidded to a halt and the inviting lightness of their little talk was gone for Cliff. Not for Larry though, given the casual way he dusted off his hands and got up from the floor. As if he didn’t just remind Cliff how fucking sad he really is, stuck in his room and not talking to them for days and days.

“Maybe.” Cliff didn’t budge from his crouched position. This body did not hurt, it had no need to fidget nervously. So his joints remained locked as Larry stared down at him.

“Get a hobby, Steele.” 

Larry’s words were always soft, muffled by the wrappings around his face. They should have been harsh but they weren’t.

I should get a hobby, thought Cliff. 

“What, like your plants?” He asked, putting an end to his considering silence. 

“Like my plants.” Confirmed Larry, picking up the large pot from the floor. 

Cliff looked around Larry’s room as if he was seeing it for the first time. There was a lot of plants here. And he knew there was a lot more of them downstairs. And even more in the bus parked outside the manor. A lot of potential distractions.

What if Larry planted one for each dark thought?

Cliff wasn’t sure where this question came from so he returned to the conversation.

“I don’t do hobbies… I’m swamp trash.” 

He got up with a whirring noise. Two fingers of his metal hand gripped the nearest leaf of the plant in Larry’s arms. It looked like he was about to pluck it out, but Cliff was just desperately trying to coax some sensation out of the plant. He couldn’t remember what a leaf was supposed to feel like between his fingers. Smooth? Wrinkly? Cold? Room-temperature? Leathery? Little pores? He could not recall.

Larry cautiously stared at the fingers pinching the leaf. 

“What did you do before all this?” He asked.

“Told you… Raced.” Cliff replied absentmindedly.

“What did you do for fun?” Larry pressed.

Fucked the nanny, thought Cliff but chose to shrug instead. 

“Racing was fun. Can’t do that anymore.” He let go off the leaf and noted the soft tilt of Larry’s head. “I can’t feel how fast I’m going, so what’s the fucking point.” 

Larry did not respond for which Cliff was strangely grateful. Instead, he stretched out his arms, handing the plant in his arms to Cliff. 

Oh. 

“Uh, no thanks. I would probably kill it.” Cliff shook his head mechanically.

“I’m not giving it to you.” Judging by Larry’s deadpanned retort, he was seconds away from stating that Cliff was an idiot. “You’re going to carry it downstairs.”

Cliff almost let out a sigh of relief. “Oh, fuck. Sorry, I thought you were, I don’t know. Giving me a pity plant.”

Larry exhaled through his nose, apparently above asking what exactly is a pity plant. He turned around to pick up two smaller pots from the floor which Cliff just noticed. The tiny plants looked freshly repotted as well, at least to his untrained eyes.

“If you’re here, you might as well help.” Larry shrugged. “Simple as that.”

No, no pity from Larry, it would seem. What a strange guy, Cliff thought. He remembered their walking lessons from the days in which Cliff was just learning how to half-live. It was always Larry who pushed him forward, Larry who did not let him stagnate. Larry seemed to understand how important the motion was. Cliff always had to keep moving, the direction did not matter to him, the destination was just an afterthought. And now, trapped in this prison, covered in notches, moving was more important than ever. 

Larry opened the door with his elbow and stepped aside.

Cliff looked at him, then he looked at the large plant entrusted to robot arms that did not feel like his. If he’s moving, he’s not thinking.

“Alright.” And he stepped through the lead-lined threshold. 

Larry followed him and joined his side. Cliff watched him inspect his grip on the pot and then peer into his red eyes with something resembling curiosity.

“It’s a good thing you don’t get tired.” Larry observed casually. 

Cliff could just ignore the comment or agree with it. The pot did look heavy after all, the leaves of the plant went all the way up to his blocky jaw, tickling it but producing no sensation. What Larry said made sense. But Cliff was sick of the unspoken misery, sick of feeling like he was built out of glass instead of metal. So he shot back with confidence:

“Yeah, I can go all night baby.” 

Larry’s foot caught on the carpet before the stairs and had to take two quick steps to regain his effortless saunter. Cliff tried to decide whether to file this reaction for later or not, but before he could do that, Larry summed up the whole interaction with one word:

“Charming.” His accent on the first syllable was so biting, Cliff almost took a step back. But he didn’t because it was a challenge and Cliff Steele did not step away from a challenge. He found the ball again and it was rolling down the stairs alongside them.

“Don’t you mean Charmin? Because--” But before Cliff could gesture at the layers and layers of mummy wrap on Larry, he got distracted with a possibility of another snap: “Wait, did you guys even have toilet paper in the sixties?”

Larry turned his head sharply to look at him, his voice high with exasperation-- he seemed lit up with something alive. “What are you even talking about.”

He did that to Larry, he made him sound so animated. 

“What, you weren’t one of those dirty hippies? Free love and all?”

Larry snorted loudly and Cliff wished that the stairs they were walking down would never end. 

“I was in the army. The opposite of ‘free love and all’.” The low, tamed sound suddenly returned to Larry’s voice and Cliff cursed in the safety of his head. The last step of the stairs followed right after that, just like punctuation. Before any of them could elaborate, Larry gestured with his head to the room on the right and they went in.

It was one of the many living rooms of the manor. Cliff, who grew up in trailers, did not understand the need for so many big rooms. This one was already filled out with Larry’s little jungle of plants. It seemed to be one of his favorite rooms, probably because of the floor-to-ceiling windows which let in so much sun that Cliff caught himself thinking that he should squint his eyes. If only. Larry set down the two tiny plants on a spare coffee table. Cliff waited patiently for further commands but Larry did not even look at him while fixing the positions of two pots. So he shrugged and set down the plant on the floor, next to a sofa. Larry looked at the new position, judged it for a sharp second and nodded with appreciation. 

In a way, Cliff was glad he didn’t offer a ‘thank you’. This whole situation felt better unacknowledged. 

“You know.” Larry started. Cliff moved to stand next to him. “I’m sure there’s something you can do that’s not racing.”

“I thought you just hired me as your plant delivery man.”

Larry turned to look at him. Again, Cliff saw his robotic, repulsive reflection in the black lenses. Red dots burning through the lead to the radioactive core. The way Larry held his gaze seemed to mean something but Cliff couldn’t tell what.

“Maybe you can fix the bus outside.” This was the softest Larry has ever sounded and Cliff had to look away. 

Larry was right. They were both locked up and Cliff couldn’t expect Larry to drag him to freedom. He was right. And yet, Cliff couldn’t stop himself from one last remark. 

“Wish I could, but, uh, you know. Tinkering loses its charm after you become a machine yourself.”

And that was the peak of self-pity Cliff was capable of showing today. Or ever. Larry stared at him, pressing a bandaged hand to his own sternum in a strange display of surprise. It was a concerned gesture, but at the same time, it was subdued. Because Larry knew better than to be shocked by what Cliff said. All of them had a great capability to hurt. All of them had horrible things to say about themselves and their fates.

“Then we’ll think of something else.” Said the radioactive man, his hand still pressed to his chest.

The tone Larry used was quiet but decisive. Of course they will think of something else. Of course there’s a solution somewhere out there. 

Cliff believed his words immediately. Just because of the resolve in Larry’s voice. It was so different from the concealed maybes of Chief, the question marks and commas. Larry seemed to be the only person in this building who still believed in putting a dot at the end of the sentence. 

Cliff looked at him and then nodded. He felt like one notch less.

“Yeah. Okay.” They will think of something else. Larry’s hand dropped back to his side, satisfied. “But just so you know, I’m not going to take up knitting or whatever.”

“Why not?” Asked a new voice.

Rita suddenly marched into the room in all of her tense glory. 

“Hey Rita.” Larry greeted her and something in Rita’s face softened. But that moment passed as soon as she directed her gaze to Cliff.

“Knitting is a very useful hobby, Mister Steele.” She informed him politely, though with a lot of pointed diction. 

The moment between him and Larry was over, but that didn’t bother Cliff. He got what he needed even if he didn’t understand it yet.

“I don’t doubt that.” Cliff mimicked perfectly the thespian highs and lows of her tone which earned him an amused sound from Larry. To avoid tempting fate, he continued in a normal tone: “But, you know. Robot fingers. I don’t think I could even hold one of them… needles.”

Rita’s head bobbed, torn between signaling affront to the mocking impression and hiding the embarrassment of her faux pas. Finally, she settled on a single shrug. “Well, we won’t know unless you try.” Taking control of the situation, she gave each of them a measured look. “Stay here. I will be right back, boys.” 

And just like that, she was gone. Energetically walking away to fetch the knitting supplies, assumed Cliff. 

“Hm.” He shook his head. “Guess I’m about to learn how to knit.” 

“I better get comfortable then.” Larry said with a loud hint of a smile in his tone. 

Cliff turned around to watch Larry calmly sit on the sofa right next to the repotted plant.

“You’re smiling. I know you are, fucker. You think I’m gonna suck! You think I’m gonna suck at knitting and it will be fun to watch!” He feigned a tiny outburst of betrayed anger and realized he sounded like a certain Cliff Steele just now.

“I’m not smiling.” Replied Larry, smilingly. 


End file.
